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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24593989">Tattered Memorials and Solace</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zippit/pseuds/Zippit'>Zippit</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Band of Brothers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Friendship, Gen, M/M, Pining, implied Richard Winters/Lewis Nixon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 06:55:41</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,115</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24593989</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zippit/pseuds/Zippit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone in Easy is out celebrating their release from the front. Everyone that is but Dick Winters. Nix makes it his job to ensure Dick doesn't forget to take a moment away from his duties.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Heavy Artillery Rolling Remix 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Tattered Memorials and Solace</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">


        <li>
            Inspired by

            <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24464137">all the roads lead to you (70s in spirit)</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThrillingDetectiveTales/pseuds/ThrillingDetectiveTales">ThrillingDetectiveTales</a>.
        </li>

    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Thanks to <a href="/users/thrillingdetectivetales">thrillingdetectivetales</a> for the beta!</p><p>Set during Ep 5 - Crossroads in the scene where Dick's struggling to write on that typewriter. This is more of a scene within a scene and it's mostly giving a deeper look into Nix's head during the whole thing. Thanks to the BoB writers for the Dick and Nix dialogue I borrowed.</p><p>Hope you enjoy and thanks for reading!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Nix watches Dick hunched over the typewriter they’d excavated from the not so ruined ruins of Shoonderlogt, Holland and wonders. In another time, another place, Dick would be the tired old gumshoe and Nix would be the pretty face. He’s got the alcoholic part down pat along with the money. Dick has the dedication and soul weariness that shouldn’t look so appealing on someone so young. It should shock no one that Mrs. Nixon’s baby boy loved reading the dime store novels she hid from Stanhope just as much as she did.</p><p>Dick is tired. Nix sees it in the frown etched into his forehead and the glare directed at the continual curl of paper coming off the typewriter. It’s in the pencil he sets down slightly too hard on the table as he gets up to get Nix what he came for.</p><p>He’s barely seen hide or hair of Dick outside this room since they’d gone to regiment. There’s a reason, unless he’s officially summoned, he avoids regimental HQ like the plague. And even then it’s a toss up. It’s a lesson that would serve Dick well if he learned it. The stove crackles against the wall. A low hiss thump as wood splits and crumbles. The warmth that’s seeped into the room envelops him in light tendrils and reminds Nix of winter nights and the chocolate delight of homemade cookies. The stench of kerosene, however, fills the room worse than the cigars that he wasn’t supposed to miss. Dick’s been at it awhile. The flickering light is half the reason he’d come up here. The other being that these aren’t the hours Dick normally kept.</p><p>Smells like horse’s ass, he thinks as Dick opens his footlocker and gives him that same look he’s given him every time just tinged with more annoyance and exasperation. He has a range, which Nix has taken to cataloging. There’s the amused curl of Dick’s mouth where he’s fondly exasperated and graduations on up until Nix knows he’s in for some shit. It happens when there’s no amusement at all and simply resignation shot through with the deeply buried urge to shake some sense into him.</p><p>Dick’s the better man for not giving in.</p><p>Nix is the sinner for wanting so much more to give.</p><p>He goes through the motions of pouring and refilling his flask, of talking to Dick as he immediately sits back down at his desk, and then the man lobs a grenade into the center of his carefully crafted facade.</p><p>“Well, why don’t you…why don’t you just give it up?”</p><p>He’s unsure if the wayward pounding of his heart reflects on his face. Is it finally the end of the line? Has Dick finally gotten tired of his antics and decided to cut and run now that he’s high enough up that regiment knows him by name? The words start to jumble as more doubts careen through his mind. He swallows against the soft cotton collar suddenly tight against his throat.</p><p>“Drinking?” he throws back casually as if his world wasn’t hanging by a splinter’s margin.</p><p>Dick finally looks at him. “No. Hiding it in my footlocker.”</p><p>The relief that washes through him is depressing. He wasn’t supposed to be this dependent on this stubborn, infuriating man. The man that makes Nix be better than he ever should’ve wanted to be. He’d fled a marriage, a hometown, and a last name. A last name which was what that infuriating man now called him half the time. He’d never loved it coming off anyone else’s lips.</p><p>“You’re a captain for Pete’s sake.”</p><p>Nix gives a small chuckle as he soaks up the spilled droplets of alcohol with a finger and brings it to his lips. It tastes like absolution and despair with a hint of something he can’t name. Can’t let it go to waste now. It’s a fine vintage. No telling the next time he’s going to get a restock.</p><p>“Maybe you’re right. Maybe this is the perfect place to stop drinking. Right here on the business end of the Allied advance.” He pauses. “Cheers.” He takes a long swig.</p><p>Dick stares at him, huffs out a sigh of disbelief, but this time it’s filled with all the amusement and warmth that was missing earlier. That there, ladies and gentlemen, is exactly why this is the fifth trip he’s made tonight. Lewis Nixon holds his liquor well after all. Harry Welsh, however, might be a little drunker than he should be, all things considered. Cracking Dick out of his self-imposed martyrdom never usually took this much doing but things have changed since D-Day plus one, when more men never made it past the beaches than the ones that did.</p><p>He gets up then, his duty done, ready to head back to the rest of the men indulging themselves while they can, but pauses when the click clack of the typewriter resumes. He watches Dick again for a long moment. The two fingered slow tap-tap of one letter after the other. Dick Winters, felled from his pedestal of elegance and neatness by the terror of technology. It’ll never stop amusing Nix. He’s more concerned with the levity he’d brought about fleeing from Dick’s being like exorcised demons.</p><p>It’s the alcohol. That’s what makes him say it.</p><p>“Dick, you know, that’s not literature. You just keep it simple. Try writing it in the first person plural, you know. Say ‘we’ a lot.”</p><p>He deserves the eye roll and the dry “go the fuck away” tone. It’s not why Dick’s agonizing over these and they both know it. But that’s all Nix has to offer tonight. He won’t get close to touching everything behind what those letters mean without being significantly further into the wall of alcohol haze than he currently is.</p><p>He waves his surrender and retreats down the attic stairs. Much like the damsels in those novels, flitting in and out with sometimes helpful, sometimes useless tidbits of information. Out into the limitless night. Back out to find Harry and make sure he gets poured back into the right bed. He’s done it entirely too often recently. The thought makes him pause at the bottom of the stairs. Maybe Dick wouldn’t mind some company. Maybe he could stay and soak up the warmth a little longer.</p><p>The steady clacking coming from above tells him no. Unless he wants to deal with the unnamed brooding beast in the room. No, best to vanish out into the darkness and resume his aimless wandering. Come back later when both he and Dick are in better frames of mind.</p><p>Like a moth to a flame, he’ll be back.</p>
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